Reality
by SBello
Summary: Soul mates in every sense of the word is what they are, what they will always be. Maybe in a past life, she ponders, things had been more simple for the two of them.


The present fountain of wisdom, also called her sensei, had warned her about the outcome of this union, she'd gone against, vowing that love was going to make her life better. It did. His love was like a warm breeze in the summer, refreshing and soothing, but on the wrong days it made your hair stick to your sweaty neck or dry the rest of your moisture out of your mouth and slowly choke you.

There were days life was beautiful, smiling faces and continuous laughter, making up for other days; the times never speak of. Then there were the times the water could never seem to get hot enough to cleanse her of the regret that lingered beneath her skin. One night he had found her passed out in a tepid tub of water, once hot enough to blister her pale skin. When he questioned she'd mumbled something about, 'getting clean.' With a somber expression he bandaged and tucked his pained wife into bed.

After a particularly bad argument she'd bought a bagful of vampire novels, those deceitful books where those human women fell for the exotic, breathtaking men, and she burnt them. In the freezing weather of February she stood there and watched the nonsense turn to ashes. Those ridiculous relationships would never work in reality. Life styles, views, morals, opinions, those silly simple, feeble-minded women made her heart thick and heavy with disgust and somehow it didn't make the beating organ any lighter to watch the smoke curl and dance into the night sky; those silly, stupid women, those were mere reflections of herself. Her mind swallowing her slowly, a pressure building deep within.

When they made love, it was slow and sweet and passionate. The merging of two souls it made the pain go away. It made the ache beneath her breasts still if only for a few sweet moments. It made everything worth it. Every hurt feeling, every drop of blood from her worried lips, all of it made up with the tender embrace they shared. The only time peace found her was with in his arms, if they never moved from each other than everything would be okay, if their pasts didn't exist inside the walls of their home.

No civil discussion between them could be held on the most important subjects, only the perfect whiteness of her eyes and the colorful passion in his voice. They grew up so differently. The life in her freezes when her husband mentions having a child, it makes her stomach drop and she tries to hide the fleeting terror in her eyes. "How would we raise it," she whispers in question. He left and she didn't see him in the light of day for a week, the only moments they shared was in joint slumber in their bed where problems didn't exist, only the warmth two bodies did.

Some things she will never tell him, the unending love inside her heart for his smile won't permit it. Only the wise eyes of their aged cat, knows how she threw up and cried herself to sleep when the pregnancy test came out positive. She'd been so careful tracking her cycle, not wanting this outcome. For a brief, dark moment the idea of terminating the pregnancy crossed her mind, sending her from chopping vegetables for dinner to ridding her stomach of its' acid in the kitchen sink. Did marriage really make her this bitter or had she always been like this? As a young girl cradling her baby sister, her heart beat for the day she'd have one of her own. That was before her mother died and father pushed her to achieve what she was never meant to. Before her hands had been drenched in blood and skin marred with medals of disappointment.

Out of wifely duty or, if she decided to be brutally honest with herself, curiosity she allowed themselves to let another woman join them between the sheets. When blue eyes opened to hear the running of water he knew his wife was trying wash more than just the salt from the sweat away. Pulling the sheet from the borrowed bed her walked into the bath room and turned off the water and picked her out of the tub, used to the catatonic stare. He sat her on the toilet with practiced ease and wrapped the sheet around the crumbling form of his wife. Slowly self loathing leaked out of her milky eyes before the shudders of a soul lost racked her form. His sensitive ears heard the door shut and he knew the nameless woman was gone. It was then in that broken moment she said the words that had been burning in her throat for a full trimester, "I'm pregnant."

It took months for her to bounce back from that single night, how could she go and partake in something she didn't support in the slightest? The self-respect she gained dissolved like the ice in a glass of water. The elements for it was still there, it just wasn't formed right. Her hand didn't stop shaking until they consoled her husband as he wept in her arms, begging for forgiveness. He'd never meant to hurt her like this. He wept for both of them and she joined him, their hands joined on her disfigured stomach.

He started calling out in terror at night, his heart-broken in his sleep. The dream could start out different, but it always ended the same. Visions of her dead on a table, a screaming baby girl in his arms. Wailing at the loss of her mother who died during delivery. In a moment of weakness, after nights of keeping them both up, he told his wife of the dreams and she cradled him to her heartbeat, soothing his hair with her fingers, realizing with a pang, their bed was no longer a safe haven.

His dreams pressed on and she bit her tongue, wanting to tell him if she died during labor it wouldn't surprise her, this child between the two of them was never meant to exist. How can two people so different, so damaged by their own parents, possibly raised a babe of their own. It seemed almost a sin to bear a child for him.

The friends and family they shared didn't know of the problems faced between husband and wife, it was just too simple to be blinded by the love it took to create the life within her womb. It's much easier to blame dark rings and pale skin on the pregnancy. It seemed effortless to over-look how hard they worked to stay together, how desperately his hand clung to her's. It's even harder to admit the relationship everyone mooned, rooted for, and fussed over is not as flawless as it seems.

When her water finally broke, three weeks late, it was like the two was sentenced for execution, no joy was felt. He rushed her to the hospital, dodging and swerving in the streets. He stood beside her, holding her calloused hand in his shaking one. Together they cried and prayed. When the midwife called out to the doctor telling him that the mother's body was refusing to have the baby, it was fighting delivering, they rushed a worried father out of the room.

He'd punched three holes in the wall and broken two chairs before his friends showed up and managed to subdue him. It took both team mates and one shadow user to still him. The minute hand made a full lap around the still no news. A serious looking man came out half way through the second lap and asked who the father was before saying he now had a beautiful baby girl.

"And my wife?"

"Come with me." He felt him be released from the justu and followed the doctor through dual doors, towards to post-delivery room. The hall was short and only forked once before the doctor looked into the window at sleeping mother solemnly before speaking, "We're going to hold her for observation, we fear postpartum might be unkind to her."

Finding himself chewing on his lip, a habit he must of picked up from her, he cleared his throat and spoke, softly looking at his wife under blankets, a baby swaddled in pink laying on her breast. "She would never hurt our child."

"It's just a precaution."

"I understand."

If he was five years younger he would have hollered and defended his wife with as much zealously as she did when she stood between himself and Pein, but he wasn't. He'd seen her in dark moments, when it was like no life existed in her eyes, like she could never love who she was, let alone recognize her face in a mirror. He'd seen her turn off her heart for the sake of a mission. He had been naive for years at what it meant to be a true ninja, but had never she been given that luxury. Bred and raised the be a killer, but blessed with a soft heart his wife sometimes stood at the edge of loosing her sanity.

It took three months before he felt like it was safe to leave their daughter home alone with her mother. Two weeks after that and it was like a new light had come to the once dying milk-white eyes. She breast-fed with a new passion, changed like it was the highest honor, and most of all there was even more laughter. The regret that couldn't be washed away with boiling water, disappeared, sins seemingly baptized away by their baby's stick green vomit.

The warmth and love that had once existed in their personal world came back and it was better than before as their little creation nestled between them at night, wrapped in the protective blanket of her parents arms. In wee hours one morning, he caught milk-white gazing at their growing girl and smiled, finally knowing the answer to a long ago question. "We'll raise her to love, to protect, to be the best she can be, and that's all we can do." Tears of happiness flooded her eyes for the first time in years and she smiled, "That sounds perfect."


End file.
